Beneath the Dreaming Tree
Where all my stories sleep
It was my favorite part of the morning.
The cloying aroma of already consumed fresh coffee still tantalized my senses as I sat down at my desk, ready to begin. Streaming light through ivied windows revealed fairy dust dancing along golden beams, which probably meant my vacuuming was overdue, but I preferred to romanticize my way out of the mundane and into a fantasy realm. After all, that’s what writers do, and today would be no exception.
I had slept well in preparation for my onslaught. My computer screen would fill with words, typed in frenzied excitement as a new story unfolded. The tale would tumble out, unforced and unrehearsed, flowing unbidden, with unexpected twists and turns, to delight and surprise both myself and the future reader.
I sat primed, hands poised over the keyboard, but strangely, there was nothing. I shrugged and flexed my fingers, grinning stupidly, anticipating some action.
Nothing!
Small beads of sweat formed on my brow, my nervous fingers began feather-trembling.
“What the hell?” This was new! A never-before-experienced phenomenon!
Normally, when ‘the write’ was upon me, I would spend some time in the evening with vague ideas; a feel for a story brewing. Then I would sleep on it. In the morning, I would have my coffee, empty my mind of preconceived ideas, and then hurry to my computer to begin the day’s creative rush.
As my anxiety levels began to rise, I reminded myself that I was probably experiencing what others referred to as “writers’ block”. I shook my head incredulously, others, yes but never me!
With the idea that if I started, the juices would flow, I banged a word onto my keyboard.
“I”-That was it-“I”.
“I” what?
I had no bloody idea! “Come on,” I silently screamed, “be a devil, type another word!”
Encouraged, I finger-pecked, “approached”.
“I approached …” the words glared defiantly from my computer screen. I waited.
“You can do it”, my left brain announced smugly. “Go on, finish the sentence. Nothing to it — here, let me help.”
My left brain gushed, “I approached a zebra crossing, pressed the button, and waited for the walking man to turn from red to green.”
“Did you get that?” Left Brain enquired impatiently.
“Sure,” I nodded, not altogether certain that writing was a left-brained job.
“Of course, it is,” LB exclaimed. “Let’s get this out of the way. I have some analytical shit to get on with — your budget is a train wreck!”
I capitulated, hands and fingers poised, waiting for my mental Dictaphone…
“I approached a zebra crossing, pressed the button, and waited for the walking man to turn from red to green. An insistent buzzer announced that it was safe to cross. I stepped out and got pulverized by a number twenty-seven council bus. The End.”
“That can’t be it!” I cried in horror. “Where’s the pace? The build-up? The drama? Where the hell is the story?”
Silence. Left Brain had retreated to a dark corner, probably more interested in why my tapping on a keyboard produced letters on a screen than the actual words themselves.
The rest of my brain was stunned into inaction and disbelief.
I sat for several more hours. Nothing happened, save for a few indiscriminate, meaningless words, typed and then deleted.
Dispirited and exhausted, I gave up and went to bed.
The next morning, coffee (and housework) overlooked, I rushed with bleary eyes to my computer. I had dreamed, an epiphany; my path forward was clear.
To test what I now knew to be true, I reloaded the previous day’s pathetic story attempt.
“I approached a zebra crossing, pressed the button, and waited for the walking man to turn from red to green. An insistent buzzer announced that it was safe to cross. I stepped out and got pulverized by a number twenty-seven council bus. The End.”
There it was. Not exactly a contender for the Women’s Literary Prize. Maybe I could think up a title.
Nothing. Another sentence? Not a thing.
Okay, so let’s do the whole new story approach. Visualize me in a thinking pose, eyes cast up and to the left– wait for it… Diddly squat, cipher, naught, nix!
The tree had been right!
“What tree?” I hear you ask. (Or was Left Brain sticking his fifty-cents worth in)?
“The Dreaming Tree, beneath which all my stories sleep,” I told myself.
Let me explain.
Following the previous day’s writing failure, I hit the sack and drifted into a fitful sleep. I think I must have experienced a lucid dream because I knew I was dreaming.
In my mind, I stumbled through a barren desert dotted with dry, brittle foliage that was slowly losing its struggle for survival. Bleached book spines and computer carcasses lay baking beneath a merciless sun as I struggled through the heat haze, my throat and nostrils lined with gritty, drying sand.
Just as I thought I would surely perish, lost in my imaginary elements, the scenery morphed into a thick haze. My vision was completely obscured. I halted in my tracks and prayed that the swirling mist would clear, revealing a crystal-clean lake.
I was still rubbing at sand-seared eyes when a zephyr breeze gently parted the mist to reveal small but tumultuous waves breaking across a rock-strewn shoreline. As visibility improved, I became aware of a gorgeous tree, slightly gnarled and misshapen, growing beyond the break. The tree was glorious in its simplicity, shrouded in a mysterious foggy cloak and growing, miraculously, in seawater.
“Impossible!” I whispered in admiration; my searing thirst, forgotten.
“How so?” queried the tree.
“You seem to be defying nature, growing in the brine.”
“Nothing is impossible to the writers of the world,” Tree re-joined. “I would have thought that was obvious to you.”
“I used to think that until yesterday,” I complained, “when I was afflicted by writers’ block.”
“Writers’ block? Is that what you think happened. Fiddle-faddle,” Tree scoffed.
I looked up in surprise. Could Tree know something I didn’t?
Tree branches shook violently, sending a shower of small seeds into the ocean. The boat-shaped pods surfed a ride on an incoming wave, sprouted tiny wings, and flew in many directions, appearing to dissolve into the early dawn sky.
“What the ..?” I stuttered in amazement.
Tree gently bowed her boughs in a display of humble self-pride. “It was time to send the stories to their owners.”
The fine hairs on the back of my neck stood abruptly to attention as the meaning of Tree’s words settled on my understanding. “You mean,” I blurted excitedly, “that this is where inspiration lies?”
“In the ocean beneath my trailing roots. When a story’s time has come, it floats up through my tendrils and is reborn into the sea. Well, you saw what happens after that.”
“Every story lies beneath you?” I enquired in awe.
“There are other trees and other methods, but the essence is the same,” she replied. “You like to send a request out at night and I match you up with your story in the dawn. You suit the tree delivery system perfectly.”
I scratched my temple. I had so many questions, but only a few were pressing.
“You said my story. Aren’t my ideas my own– randomly invented and selected by my mind?”
“Sort of,” replied Tree kindly, “but your random ideas are connected, intertwined with all of Creativity. I select and send you the jobs tailor-made for you, your circumstances, your life experience, your worldview. Only you can write your stories your way.”
My recovered neck hairs began to creep up again. “What happens if the little seeds of inspiration get mixed up and go to the wrong author?”
Tree hesitated for just a second. “Well, it can sometimes take time, but they usually find their way.”
“And if they stay lost?” Dread settled in my belly.
Tree rustled and cleared her throat. “They only stay lost if the wrong recipient tries to force them to spill their beans. In that case, the receiver will never find inspiration again.”
I gulped in terror. “What about the intended recipient?”
“I am afraid the result would be the same. Specific inspirations belong to their creators. That is the rule.”
“Can I fix it?” I pleaded tremulously.
Tree sighed sadly. “A blockage can only be cleared if the intended recipient is united with the seeds of their inspiration.”
So there I was, coffee overlooked and housework still in shambles. I worked feverishly at my desktop computer, then frantically at my printer. When I had printed a sizeable stack of A4 posters, I raced to my car and set forth on my mission.
I was reasonably happy with my efforts. (Did Tree send inspiration for small jobs like lost and found posters? I hadn’t thought to ask). On pretty yellow craft paper I had printed the image of a tree that reminded me of Tree. In bold, large type beneath the graphic sat my urgent public message:
If you are an author with sudden-onset, chronic writers’ block, you may have lost your inspiration. Do the following words stimulate you? Do you feel an overwhelming urge to complete this story?
“I approached a zebra crossing, pressed the button, and waited for the walking man to turn from red to green. An insistent buzzer announced that it was safe to cross. I stepped out and got pulverized by a number twenty-seven council bus. The End.”
If this tale belongs to you, please contact me on the number below, urgently.
No time-wasters, or smartarse callers! Thank you.
I spent the entire day circumnavigating my quite sizeable town. Bright yellow posters adorned café windows, community billboards, sides of trees, blank walls, even the local library. I rolled tacky gum and stuck sticky tape until my fingers chafed and my two reams of paper were completely depleted. Worryingly, the town looked slightly over-done, and I began to develop anxiety over the possibility of receiving a threatening call from a city official.
I needn’t have concerned myself. By the time I had fielded four hundred and thirty-two clever-dick calls from local riff-raff, I would have welcomed a stern conversation with a Council representative.
Eventually, my phone grew silent and over the following weeks, I began to despair of ever pairing the writer with their story. Accordingly, I was also beginning to worry about how to fill my leisure hours because writing, it seemed, was now lost to me forever.
It occurred to me that I could retrace my steps around town and retrieve the mountain of now weather-worn paper I had indiscriminately plastered on every conceivable surface. Perhaps that would help me experience a sense of purpose. Only trouble was, I no longer seemed to give a crap about anything. A deep sadness had settled over me. It was inconceivable that the tremendous loss I was experiencing was due solely to the loss of my writing ability; there seemed to be so much inexplicable grief.
Three weeks following my tree revelations, I decided I needed to do something. Cleaning up my poster mess seemed as good an idea as any, so I drove out to woodenly retraced my steps around town. Dressed for comfort with a big black garbage bag slung over my arm, I pulled sticky-taped yellow remnants from trees, windows, and other similarly adorned surfaces. The work had a cathartic effect, and I drove home, garbage bag riding shotgun, humming a sad but lilting tune.
As I pulled up, I spotted a man who was turning to vacate my front doorstep. In his hand, he held a tattered yellow poster. Damn, I must have missed one!
I scrambled from my vehicle, pushing unkempt stray hairs from my eyes. It was probably time to attend to my personal appearance again.
“Hello, there!” called the man, cheerfully waving the offending yellow object like a flag. “This yours?”
I shrugged, uncertain. Admit guilt or deny ownership?
“A guy at the Council said this was your mobile number. Said he tried to call you the day you put the posters up. When he finally got through, you called him a moronic tosser. Haha. He also said to tell you that when the clean-up crew has finished, you’ll be getting a bill.”
“Too late for that,” I replied, pointing at the swollen black bag on my front seat. “Cleaned ’em up myself. Just now.”
“Great,” acknowledged the rather good-looking fellow who was barring my progress down the garden path. “Can I have it back, then?”
“What?” I began to feel impatience rising.
“My story!” He waggled the poster for extra effect. “I believe you have my story and I’ve come to get it back.”
I experienced a sudden rush of blood to my ears. Weakly, I muttered, “I’ve given this a lot of thought; if it truly is your story, the fact that you have it in your hands means you already have it back.”
I saw the man grin slowly as understanding dawned– and then my legs buckled unsteadily.
The joy on his face was replaced with concern as he rushed forward to offer support. With his arm firmly under my elbow, I unlocked my door and allowed the kindly stranger to guide me to my settee.
When he was sure I wasn’t in imminent danger of collapse, he introduced himself.
“I’m John Nesbeth,” he flashed the warmest of smiles. I felt weak-kneed again.
“I’m…” I began.
“I know who you are,” he interrupted. Noticing my perplexed expression, he added, “Council guy, remember?”
I nodded. “So, you are claiming your story.”
He nodded. “Yep, it’s mine alright.”
“Good, now maybe I can get some work done.” I wrestled with my next statement but decided to blurt it out anyway. “If you don’t mind my saying, it seems a pretty droll story to have caused so much fuss.”
He seemed unoffended. “Got your attention, didn’t it?”
‘“I suppose. It did cause a lot of trouble, but I guess that wasn’t your fault.”
“Oh, but it was! My fault I mean.”
I looked up at him in surprise. “A seed of inspiration lost its way– the blame for that can hardly be attributed to you.”
“Tree and I concocted a plan together.” He grinned his charming smile.
“You’ve met Tree?” I was astonished.
“Sure,” John seemed to be warming to his story, “but, let me start at the beginning.”
I indicated that he should continue.
“I have had an idea for a story for many years but whenever I tried to write it, I couldn’t get past the first couple of words. I mean, literally, two words. I spent so many nights pondering over the mystery until one night, before bed, I realized that the story couldn’t be written until I had a proper ending; an ending that would satisfy both the reader and myself.”
My curiosity was piqued and strangely, my heart began to pound uncomfortably in my breast. An unwanted thought about attending to my appearance flashed through my mind; I self-consciously primped my wayward hair.
John noticed and grinned before continuing, “That night I dreamed of a conversation with a wondrous tree which was growing in a misty sea. She showed me how inspiration pods were spawned by the ocean and set free by her branches, and she explained how I could find my happy ending.”
As I listened, hope blossomed in my chest, and the small beginnings of understanding began to grow in my befuddled brain. “Tree sent the seeds of your story to me deliberately, knowing I would look for you because I was stuck in writers’ limbo.”
John was looking into my eyes, searching, but I still wasn’t quite there.
Strangely, he began to whisper, “I approached a zebra crossing, pressed the button, and waited for the walking man to turn from red to green. An insistent buzzer announced that it was safe to cross. I stepped out and got pulverized by a number twenty-seven council bus.”
His eyes continued to hold mine with an intensity I should have found unsettling, but didn’t.
And then I began to understand. That wasn’t the end!
“You were the young man who was hit by the bus. When was it? Fifteen years ago?”
John grinned happily. “And you were the angel who cradled me in your arms until the ambulance arrived. I was in a coma for a couple of weeks, and then it took six months to truly recover. During that whole time, your beautiful face was my inspiration to grow strong and get back on my feet. I looked for you, never knowing your name, but, well, you seemed to just disappear.”
“I called the hospital several times to enquire.” I blurted in defense. “They wouldn’t tell me much, but when I found out you were on the mend, I stopped calling. Shortly afterward, I moved. Only been back here for a couple of months.” I pushed annoying strands of hair from my forehead, unsure of what to say next.
John stood and came to sit beside me on the settee. I didn’t mind at all.
“So,” I ventured, suddenly shy, “maybe now you can work out an ending to your story.”
“I’m thinking, possibly a romantic one, where man finds woman and they ride off into the sunset together.” John’s strong hand curled tentatively over mine. “What do you think?”
“Hmm,” I mused dreamily, “I think this calls for a writers’ collaboration.”
John nodded. “I think that’s exactly what Tree had in mind.”
